Strategies for improving administrative decision making of Secondary school principals in Umuahia education Zone of Abia State

ABSTRACT

This study investigates strategies for improving decision making of secondary school principals in Umuahia Education zone of Abia State. The purpose of this study is to find out strategies for improving administrative decision-making of secondary school principals in Umuahia Educational zone of Abia State.  Four research questions and four hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design. A sample size of 34 principals and 102 teachers was used for the study. The sample was drawn using multi stage sampling technique to select 34 principals and 102 teachers from Umuahia Education Zone.The researcher developed a structured questionnaire titled “strategies for improving decision-making of secondary school principals in Umuahia Education zone of AbiaState “Strategies for Improving Administrative Decision Making Questionnaire. (SIADMQ) which was used for data collection. The test re-test method was used to determine the reliability of the instrument which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.87. Data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions, while the t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that the use of administrative strategies in the area of supervision of instruction, financial management and maintenance of discipline strategies to a high extent, improve the administrative decision making of principals in schools. Based on the findings, it was recommended that principals should be trained on the effective ways of using supervision of instruction and also show high sense of discipline in their daily actions. There is also the need to include prudency in the management of finance and government should organize regular workshops and seminars for principals on how to identify those task areas where they could effectively involve teachers in administrative decision making among others.